Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life

Sunday, October 23, 2016

The New Yorker Endorses Hillary Clinton

As seems to be the case with major print media outlets in New York City, Donald Trump's home town, The New Yorker has endorsed Hillary Clinton in a lengthy editorial. As noted before, those most familiar with Trump seemingly cannot stand the man and view him with revulsion. A sample line from the endorsement: "The
vileness of her opponent’s rhetoric and his record has been so widely aired
that we can only hope she will be able to use her office and her impressive
resolve to battle prejudice wherever it may be found." Sadly, Trump now represents the true face of the Republican Party base and even if Trump loses, as I pray is the case, the sickness within the GOP will not be eliminated. Here are endorsement highlights:

On November 8th, barring some astonishment, the people of
the United States will, after two hundred and forty years, send a woman to the
White House. The election of Hillary Clinton is an event that we will welcome
for its immense historical importance, and greet with indescribable relief. It
will be especially gratifying to have a woman as commander-in-chief after such
a sickeningly sexist and racist campaign, one that exposed so starkly how far
our society has to go. The vileness of her opponent’s rhetoric and his record
has been so widely aired that we can only hope she will be able to use her
office and her impressive resolve to battle prejudice wherever it may be found.

On every issue of consequence, including economic policy,
the environment, and foreign affairs, Hillary Clinton is a distinctly capable
candidate: experienced, serious, schooled, resilient.

If she is elected, she will have weathered a prolonged
battle against a trash-talking, burn-it-to-the-ground demagogue. Unfortunately,
the drama is not likely to end soon. The aftereffects of this campaign may
befoul our civic life for some time to come.

If the prospect of a female President represents a
departure in the history of American politics, the candidacy of Donald J.
Trump, the real-estate mogul and Republican nominee, does, too—a chilling one.
He is manifestly unqualified and unfit for office.

He favors
conspiracy theory and fantasy, deriving his knowledge from the darker recesses
of the Internet and “the shows.” He has never held office or otherwise served
his country, never acceded to the authority of competing visions and democratic
resolutions.

Worse
still, he does not accept the authority of constitutional republicanism—its
norms, its faiths and practices, its explicit rules and implicit
understandings. That much is clear from his statements about targeting press
freedoms, infringing on an independent judiciary, banning Muslim immigration,
deporting undocumented immigrants without a fair hearing, reviving the practice
of torture, and, in the third and final debate, his refusal to say that he will
accept the outcome of the election.

The prospect of
such a President—erratic, empty, cruel, intolerant, and corrupt—represents a
form of national emergency.

At
a time of alarming and paralyzing partisanship, this is an issue that
reasonable voices in both parties can agree upon. At last count, more than a
hundred and sixty Republican leaders had declared their refusal to support
Trump. Fifty national-security officials who served in Republican
Administrations have done the same. The CincinnatiEnquirer, the
ArizonaRepublic, the DallasMorning News, and the ColumbusDispatch—all
conservative newspapers, which have endorsed only Republicans for between seventy-six
and a hundred and twenty-six years—have endorsed Clinton.USA Today, which
has never endorsed a candidate, has declared Trump “unfit for the presidency”
and has also endorsed Clinton.The combination of free-form opportunism, heroic self-regard,
blithe contempt for expertise, and an airy sense of infallibility has
contributed to Trump’s profound estrangement from the truth.Hillary Clinton’s vision and temperament are the opposite of her
opponent’s. She has been a pioneer throughout her life, and yet her career
cannot be easily reduced to one transcendent myth: she has been an idealist and
a liberal incrementalist, a glass-ceiling-smashing lawyer and a cautious
establishmentarian, a wife and mother, a First Lady, a rough-and-tumble
political operator, a senator, a Secretary of State. Her story is about walking
through flames and emerging changed, warier and more determined. In her
intelligence, in her gimlet-eyed recognition of both the limits and the
possibilities of government, she’s a particular kind of inspirational figure, a
pragmatist and a Democratic moderate. We wish that Clinton faced a worthy
opponent: she deserves a less sullied, more substantive win. But her claim to
our support goes far beyond the nihilism of the alternative. It is also notable
that she has chosen as a running mate Tim Kaine, a highly capable politician
with a record of genuine compassion; by contrast, the Republican
Vice-Presidential choice, Mike Pence, has tried to position himself for the
future on the national stage but has distinguished himself as one of the
country’s most fiercely anti-gay politicians, declaring that marriage freedom
would lead to “societal collapse.”The most important reason to vote for Clinton may be the matter
of the Supreme Court. For two generations, conservative Justices have dominated
the Court, and they have imposed their will on several critical areas of the
law. Thanks to Citizens United and related cases, the law on campaign finance
is in shambles, and wealthy donors now reign over the political process. In
2013, a five-to-four majority gutted the Voting Rights Act, perhaps the most
important civil-rights law in American history, and Republican state
legislators have taken advantage of this shameful moment in the Court’s history
to limit the franchise of those who might vote against them—that is, minorities
and Democrats.. . . . Clinton
has a chance to lock in these gains, reverse some of the losses, and even
augur a new, and very different, era on the Court.Despite the conspiratorial conjectures of Clinton’s opponents,
her politics hide in plain sight. She is a committed progressive on many
issues, including the rights of women and minorities; gun laws (she would
expand background checks, close gun-show and Internet-sales loopholes, and
repeal legislation that immunizes the gun industry from liability litigation);
and, more recently, immigration (where she favors comprehensive reform, a
pathway to citizenship, and an end to family detention).Clinton not only promises to be a vastly better President than
her opponent; she has every chance of building on the successes and insights of
a predecessor who will leave office with a remarkable record of progressive
change and, in an often ugly time, as an exemplar of Presidential temper and
dignity.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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